


An Open Door

by Barkour



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Missing Scene, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 09:58:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1546664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The evening after the thaw, Elsa and Anna discuss the past and the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Open Door

**Author's Note:**

> A sort of missing scene fic, to be set between the climax and the epilogue. :)

One of the two great doors to the portrait gallery opened very quietly, as if the person on the other side were holding the latch so it made little sound. That little sound was enough to startle Elsa, and out of habit she stood up from the bench to leave out the other set of doors on the far end of the gallery.

Anna, in the doorway, threw out her hand. “No,” she said, “wait—”

Elsa had stopped, halfway to her feet, before Anna spoke. She sat again, gracefully, though her legs ached. For a moment when she first saw Anna where she stood in the shadows of the gallery’s entrance, Elsa had thought her a small girl: a child with red hair in pigtails; and the old fear had stuck her.

“I wasn’t going anywhere,” Elsa said.

Anna sighed. Her hand fell to her side again, and she smiled, cheeks dimpling, at Elsa. Elsa would have told her to close the door but Anna did it on her own, without prompting, just as gently as she’d opened it, and they were alone together in the silence of the gallery. Anna shook out her skirts inexpertly as she sat, and she wound up sitting on a great deal of bunched fabric. Her ankles stuck out from under the hems. She was in many ways still girlish. 

Elsa had lit one small lamp, set in the wall on the left side of the royal portrait of the late king and queen of Arendelle. The lamp made a small pool on the stone floor at their feet, but it cast more shadows than it did light. She had been looking up at her mother and her father in the dark and trying very hard not to think of anything at all.

“I was looking all over for you,” Anna said. She pulled at her braid, draped over her shoulder. “Um. Sorry for bothering you.”

“You didn’t bother me,” Elsa said, but then they were both of them silent. 

Their father smiled down at them. Mother was more melancholy, Elsa thought; she thought it with some surprise. There were pinched corners to Mother’s smile. Elsa had never noticed them before. She wondered if it was the artist who had done this or if Mother had smiled like that for him, and if Mother’s pinched smile had come before Elsa or after. That was another thing she didn’t want to think of.

Anna cleared her throat. “So,” she said, “what were—what were you doing?”

Elsa touched the inside of her own elbow, lightly with the tips of her fingers. Remotely she thought on how earlier that day, on the docks outside the castle, she had allowed herself to believe it was all of it over; that the gulf between them had at last closed. Anna sat near enough to her that the warmth of her touched Elsa, as Anna did not. They were both of them careful to sit with arms tucked in and knees pressed together. The habit had not died. The gulf remained.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Elsa said. She left it at that. 

Beside her, Anna stirred. She looked up, following Elsa’s gaze to their mother’s. Again Anna sighed.

“I miss them.”

Elsa had learned to navigate the world without the king and queen; how to keep it as much like she remembered it. Now it would change again; already it changed. Her heart fluttered like a panicked bird in a glass cage. She tightened her hands in her lap. If they were still here, they could tell Elsa what to do.

“As do I,” said Elsa.

Anna set her hand on top of Elsa’s, and Elsa startled, turning. Anna’s brow was heavy: she looked at Elsa as though she were nearly angry.

“You’re pulling away again,” her little sister said.

Elsa opened her mouth. She meant to tell Anna that it was none of her business what Elsa did, how Elsa had survived. Anna couldn’t see how frightening the future was, how huge and how ill-prepared they were for it. Elsa looked again to their parents, standing over them, remote, unreal. 

“I don’t mean to,” Elsa said. 

She unfolded her hands so that she could turn the one hand under Anna’s and clasp her hand. Anna’s palm was warm. Elsa felt the coldness of her own hand in how the heat of Anna’s fingers struck her, as something so alien and awful in its unfamiliarity. She clutched Anna’s hand more tightly. She had only wanted to protect Anna. Elsa remembered very little of when Anna was born; she hadn’t yet turned three. She did remember, with the indistinct certainty of something that had always been true, that it was Elsa’s duty as the eldest to look after her.

“Do you remember Olaf?”

Elsa smiled at their hands. “Of course. He’s downstairs, isn’t he, begging the cooks for more hot meat pies?” She had passed the kitchens the hour before on her way to the gallery, and though the kitchens were meant to have closed after dinner, the lights had been on. Elsa had heard Olaf singing about stoked fires and bread fresh from the oven.

Anna shook her head. “No—the first Olaf. When we were kids.”

“Yes,” Elsa said slowly, “I remember.” 

Anna had been too little to remember the first snowman Elsa had made her, that first time outside by the decorative fish pond in spring, when they had snuck out the servants’ door to go on an adventure in the sprawling wilds of the queen’s garden. That snowman had been poorly formed, a testament of Elsa’s inexperience, and she had resolved to improve on it, but each time she had tried to make a handsomer snowman—one with a round head or a proportioned chest—Anna had shouted. She liked _that_ snowman; she liked Olaf; she didn’t care that Elsa could make a better one. Anna had wanted the old snowman, the clumsy one with the lopsided face and the arm that drooped.

The lamp flickered. Elsa, slipping from Anna’s hand, rose to tend it. A small blade and a box of matches were hidden in the hollow base of the lamp.

Of her back, Anna asked, “You used your magic to make him, didn’t you?”

Elsa’s hands were steady as she used the knife to trim the wax back. The flame shivered and winked at her. She had used to stay up late in her cold bed watching the fire dancing in the hearth in her room. The wax was cleared. She set the knife back in the recession and closed the tiny metal door on it.

“Yes,” Elsa said. She fixed the glass around the candle. “I did.”

“But I don’t remember it,” Anna said. She frowned. “Or—I remember some of it. I think.” Lightly she touched her temple. “I didn’t remember anything but on the mountain, after I met Olaf… It’s like I had a dream and then I woke up and I forgot all about it but now it’s coming back. Why don’t I remember it?” Anna asked her.

Elsa stood, very still, by the lamp. Her shoulders, bared as they were, were chilled even with the lamp hot and so close. The lines of her shadow blurred, thrown by the motion of the flame. Her hands had folded again at her waist. Their mother stood like that in the portrait, at a distance from the man who had painted the smiling king and his smiling queen. Their parents were behind her, and Anna was waiting before her.

“We were playing in the little ball room,” Elsa said.

When she had finished, Anna looked down. She said, “They—separated us? But it was just an accident. I hurt myself all the time by accident.”

Elsa crossed to the bench and knelt. She hesitated and then—uncertain—she reached for Anna’s hands, to hold them.

“They loved us,” Elsa said urgently. “They were only trying to protect us.”

“I didn’t need to be protected from you!” Anna said.

“They were trying to do what they thought was best for both of us,” Elsa said, though it was the thing she saw waiting for her in that place she would not go in her thoughts. All those years she had thought, as Mother and Father had thought, that the only way to control the power in Elsa was to stifle it. She was afraid to look too deeply at it, as though she were standing at the lip of an enormous chasm and if she took even the smallest of steps toward it, the ground would break away underneath her and she would fall. She did not want Anna to come and sit in the gallery late at night, alone, only to stare at the painting of their parents and wonder why they had done what they did.

“They loved you,” Elsa said, holding Anna’s hands. “Don’t ever doubt that.”

“You’re doing it again,” Anna said, and she grabbed Elsa’s hands, as though Elsa had made to let her go. “You’re trying to protect me, but I don’t need you to protect me. Nobody has to protect me!”

Elsa lowered her eyes. “They thought it was right. And it’s done now. It’s behind us.”

Anna held on to Elsa. “But I forgot you. Elsa—”

“I’m here now,” Elsa said, relentlessly pushing Anna from it. “Aren’t I? We’re together now, aren’t we?” She rose as she spoke, to sit next to Anna again. Their knees brushed and then settled against each other. Anna turned to her.

“But I was so alone,” Anna said, “and you were alone too that entire time, and—and I just wanted you to be my friend again.”

Elsa was small, a tiny thing. She had felt that smallness often, alone in her room at night, staring at the fire as the ice crept up her bedposts and snowflakes dusted the embroidered duvet.

“I’m sorry,” Elsa said.

Anna suddenly flared. “Stop apologizing to me!” she said. “It isn’t your fault!” 

Elsa recoiled. Anna’s fingers tightened. Elsa’s wrists hurt. Then Anna flushed—her eyes slid away—she dropped her head. 

“Now I’m the one who’s sorry,” she mumbled.

In delicate fractions, Elsa relaxed. Anna still did not let go, but Elsa did not try to pull from her.

“I think,” Elsa said, “that you have a right to be angry with me.”

“I’m not angry with you!” Anna said sharply, and Elsa smiled.

“Is that why you’re shouting?”

“I’m not shouting,” Anna said.

Serenely Elsa said, “You _were_ shouting, though,” and Anna frowned ferociously. Her eyes crossed a bit when she made a face like that. Elsa told her so.

Anna touched her nose, feeling at her face as though she could make out the crossing of her eyes with her fingertips. “They don’t—do they?”

“A little,” Elsa said. She was still smiling. Her cheeks felt oddly. “It’s cute.” She paused and then—trying it out—with a boldness she didn’t quite feel, she said, “You look like a beaver that lost its dam.”

“ _Excuse_ me?” Anna said. “That’s—” but her nose wrinkled; she began, inelegantly, to snort.

A little stiffness left Elsa’s back. She felt it in the way her shoulders eased, in the tightness that unraveled in her chest.

“I’m your older sister,” Elsa said. “I’m supposed to say things like that.”

“You _used_ to say things like that all the time,” Anna said, and then they were smiling at each other. Elsa thought perhaps she had been right earlier, to think the gulf had narrowed. The distance was not so great. 

The lamp flickered again, the light unsteady. Elsa let it flicker. She was holding her little sister’s hands in her own hands and she did not want to let Anna go, even to tend to the light. She didn’t want to let Anna go ever again. The guilt was still swollen in her breast. It was because of that distance, Elsa thought, that loneliness, that Anna had wanted so badly to be loved.

Perhaps they were enough alike that their thoughts naturally flowed along the same lines, for after a few moments of that new, companionable quiet, Anna said, “What are you going to do with Hans?”

Elsa listened for any lingering feeling, some attachment that might breed reservation in Anna, but either they were of an accord on this or Elsa had not yet relearned the peculiarities of Anna’s speech. To Elsa, it sounded only like a question.

The law was very clear on the matter when it came to citizens of Arendelle; treason was punishable by death. Hans was not a citizen of Arendelle, and so he was guilty not of treason, merely attempted regicide, another capital offense, if one were a subject of the Arendelle throne. Yet an assassin, successful or unsuccessful, owed his head to the executioner’s block, and royal though his blood, the law of Arendelle allowed for the ruling person to determine the punishment. The Southern Isles would protest, as Weselton would protest if Elsa had the duke’s head. Perhaps relations would sour between the nations, but within Arendelle Elsa was queen and the queen was law.

“I will return him to the Southern Isles,” Elsa said. She had thought of what she knew of the Southern Isles: the king had married young, and the queen had given him more than enough heirs before dying in childbirth with the thirteenth son. Perhaps among his many older brothers was one who could look at Hans and still see him as a small boy. That was the duty of older siblings, to protect the younger ones. For the duke of Weselton, she had no sympathy, but she had thought it prudent to pass the same sentence, immediate exile, on two men who had committed the same crime.

“It’s better than he deserves,” Anna said fiercely, and her gaze was elsewhere. 

Elsa wondered. 

“Did you love him?” she asked.

Anna’s shoulders bowed. Her eyelashes fell down over her eyes. She was again transformed into a child before Elsa.

“I thought I did,” Anna said. “But you were right about him.”

Elsa thought before she spoke. When she did speak, she did so carefully. She’d practice with that.

“I did not know Hans’ intentions,” Elsa said. “I only thought that, it seemed very unlikely to me that anyone could fall in love so quickly.”

“Fall in love with me,” said Anna.

“No,” Elsa said furiously, and she left off Anna’s hand to grab her arm. It was an intentional boldness. In the moment that her fingers settled around Anna’s arm, a little bud of fear bloomed inside Elsa, that she would see frost spiraling out to envelope Anna; but Anna’s arm stayed precisely as it was, warm and unfrozen. 

“No,” Elsa said again. She ducked her head so that she could look up into Anna’s face. “That isn’t what I meant. Of course someone will fall in love with you. You’re courageous and kind—you found me, didn’t you?”

“Kristoff helped,” Anna said, but shyly she was smiling again.

Elsa slid her hand down to Anna’s wrist. “Everyone will love you.” She knew that they would, as Elsa loved her; it was only what was right.

Anna turned her hand over so that as Elsa clutched her wrist, Anna clutched Elsa’s wrist.

“They’ll love you too,” Anna said stoutly. “I know they’re going to. They’re going to think you’re wonderful, because you are.”

Elsa laughed and then caught herself, startled by the sound of it, but Anna was laughing again and the ease of her laughter was like a hand bracing Elsa, something to hold her up as she wavered, frightened by her own happiness.

“So,” Anna said, “good riddance to beautiful Prince Hans of the Southern Isles, I guess,” and she sighed a little. She had wanted very much to be in love, Elsa thought. 

Tentatively Elsa said, “What about that boy—Kristoff?”

“He’s not a boy,” Anna said. “He’s practically the same age you are. And what do you mean, what about Kristoff? Oh! Wait!” she said, brightening, before Elsa could fumble for something to say. “I wanted to ask you—or I guess I needed to ask you—but anyway, so when we were looking for you, his sled _kind of_ fell off a cliff into a fathomless gorge and it _kind of_ exploded and I _kind of_ promised him I’d buy him a new one—”

“Just ask,” Elsa said, amused. “Ask me if I’ll give your mountain man a new sled.”

“He’s not my mountain man,” Anna protested. “And I didn’t want to just ask you for something—”

“Why not?” Elsa arched a shoulder and her brow. “I am your big sister. And you do have your own money, don’t you?”

“I do,” Anna said, “but I wanted—well, I wanted to make sure you were okay with it.” She flushed, and Elsa wanted—surprised, as she wanted—to laugh again.

“You don’t need my permission to fulfill your promises,” Elsa told Anna. “Or—you have my permission to not ask me for permission to keep your word. If that is what you wanted my permission for.”

“It is,” Anna said quickly. “What else would I want your permission for anyway? I mean, thank you. I do want your approval. That is—stop laughing at me!”

Elsa straightened. She held a hand to her mouth till her lips stopped quivering; then, calmly, she lowered her fingers.

“I’m not laughing.”

Anna squinted at her. “ _Anymore_.”

Elsa could not dispute this, and so she simply smiled agreeably at Anna until Anna reciprocated. The quiet had come again, to fill the spaces, but the quiet was, for a change, now comfortable, as if they were old friends after all. The gulf was still there, Elsa thought. They would bridge it. Elsa smoothed out a line in her skirt as she thought of how to phrase the question she’d held through the day.

“Do you love him?” Elsa asked Anna, and when Anna tipped her head to the side in an unspoken question, Elsa clarified: “Kristoff. Your mountain man.”

She thought Anna might deny that he was her mountain man; that was why she had phrased it like so. That they could tease one another now was something marvelous, and she thought that to make a joke of it would put Anna at ease. Elsa had wondered on it, after Kristoff had cracked Hans across the jaw. At the time she hadn’t noticed or particularly cared, not with Anna encased in ice and the whole world breaking apart again, as it had when Hans had told her Anna was dead, but after: after, she had considered it.

Anna said, “I—no.” She fidgeted, crossing her ankles and then uncrossing them; she knocked her heels against the bench. She glanced at Elsa. “Maybe. Not yet.” She was quiet. Her fingers moved under Elsa’s, and with her free hand she picked at her knee, fussing with the creases in her skirt. Elsa smiled to see this small habit they shared.

Anna took a breath and said, “But I think I could. I think,” she said, her resolve wavering into a tentative thing, “that I will. If he—not that he does, but—he did come back.” 

She looked to Elsa as if for reassurance as she said this. Elsa’s heart contracted. The uncertain cant of Anna’s brow was like a blade, driven with certainty into Elsa’s chest. They had both of them been alone for so very long. If anyone could ever love Elsa, in any way, that was something she had allowed herself to consider only late at night when she could not sleep. She thought perhaps that Anna had wondered the same thing, and she thought that Hans had hurt Anna more deeply than she affected—that Elsa had hurt her. She wanted to say again that she hadn’t meant to; but if it wasn’t Elsa’s fault, then whose fault was it? She would not follow where that thought led. The pit was still there, waiting for Elsa to lean forward and look into it.

So instead Elsa said the other thing she wanted to say:

“I want you to be happy,” Elsa said. She turned Anna’s hand over so that she could fold her hands together around Anna’s fingers, her palm. The clean, white curves of Elsa’s fingernails were pale against Anna’s wrist. “I want you to be loved.” 

It was for love that the king and queen had parted Elsa and Anna: love for Elsa, love for Anna. She thought of this as she touched Anna’s wrist. What was love if not another prison? Freedom, she thought. It could be freedom as well, an opening door rather than a locked gate. She had to believe that.

Elsa met Anna’s gaze. I only just got her back, Elsa thought, remembering the little sister she had lost.

“If you do love him,” Elsa said painfully. “And if he loves you. Then you have my blessing, whenever you might need it.”

Anna wrinkled her nose. The whole of her face creased with it. Her eyes were shining. A trick of the light, perhaps, the fluttering candle throwing strange sheens like gathering tears. The queen had once scolded Elsa for making Anna cry, when they were just girls: “You must be kinder with her. She’s younger than you.”

“Elsa,” Anna said. It wasn’t a trick of the light that made her eyes shine like that. “I don’t—Elsa,” she said again, “I’m just happy to have _you_ ,” and she threw her arms around Elsa’s neck. 

Elsa rocked: Anna had flung herself at Elsa, and Elsa swayed on the bench, trying to stay upright. Her hands came up. They were heavy in the air. Gingerly, she settled them on Anna’s back.

“If you ever go away again,” Anna choked out, “I’ll punch _you_ in the arm.” 

Her own arms closed even more tightly around Elsa, so much so that Elsa couldn’t really laugh. She laughed anyway. She couldn’t help it. It was like when the sheet of ice on top of a river began to break apart in the spring. Once she had begun laughing, she had to keep going.

“Please don’t,” Elsa said. “I’ve seen how hard you can hit. You almost knocked Hans right out of his nice embroidered leather boots.”

Anna’s cheeks were wet on Elsa’s shoulder. Devoutly Elsa hoped that her nose had not begun to run, and the inanity of that wish only made her laugh again. 

“Well, he shouldn’t have been a jerk,” Anna said, lifting her head. “He tried to kill you! And me! I wish I _had_ knocked him out of his nice whatever boots.”

“They won’t be so nice now,” Elsa said. Anna’s nose had run after all. So, not just tears on Elsa’s skin. “They went into the harbor with him.”

“Good,” Anna said savagely. “I hope they rot and—they smell really badly the whole way back to the Southern Isles. Why are you smiling?”

Shyly Elsa stroked a strand of Anna’s hair back from her slick cheek. 

“All that time,” Elsa said. “I only wanted to keep you safe from me. And then you went on this great adventure, crossing the valley and climbing the mountain—”

“I had help,” Anna reminded her again.

“Walking through blizzards. Saving me. Knocking Hans and his nice boots into the water,” she said, and Anna laughed. Elsa smiled and cupped Anna’s cheek. “You didn’t need to be kept safe, or be protected, not from me or anything. Certainly not Hans.”

She had thought that might make Anna laugh again, but perhaps she still did not know her sister well enough, for Anna’s eyes were shining again and the corners of her mouth trembled. Everything ran so close to the surface for Anna, Elsa thought. She had remembered that, and yet somehow she had forgotten the particulars.

“It’s just—I don’t want to be in love right now,” Anna said, “or even think about falling in love, when—when I’ve got you again. And I can’t stop crying!” She shouted that. Angrily she scrubbed at her eyes with her hands.

“Well,” Elsa said, “you don’t _have_ to fall in love right now. That’s just as nice too. I only meant that if you _do_ decide you love Kristoff, or anyone, that I will be happy for you. And I do believe you’ve forgotten,” Elsa added as Anna grumbled into her cupped hands and Elsa realized at last why it was Anna grumbled, “that you are the princess of Arendelle and my heir, and so it isn’t as if you could run off to live on, or in, or anywhere near the mountains. If anything—if you were ever to marry him—your mountain man would have to come live here in the capital. I could even give him a position if that would make it easier for him. Official ice master.”

Plainly, this had not occurred to Anna. Her hands stilled. She jerked her head up. Her eyes were red and huge.

“Wait,” she said. “We could live here? But I thought you didn’t like men.”

“I—” Elsa broke off. She stared at Anna, who was blinking at her like an owl that hadn’t gotten enough sleep. “Anna, that—” She stopped short again.

“Well, you don’t,” Anna said, puzzled. “You didn’t like Hans at all, and you’ve always hated it when any of the men try to help you with your coat.”

Elsa found her voice. “What does that have to do with your husband—if you should have one—living in the castle? Or simply in the capital?”

Anna scrunched up her face. Slowly she admitted, “I don’t…know. I just thought that… you wouldn’t like it?”

It was because they’d lived in the castle for so long, Elsa thought. Anna only thought of the world as it was in the fairy books she liked to read.

“That’s very kind,” Elsa said at last. “But I wouldn’t marry him. I’d only want him to wash more often. He smells—” She hunted for the most discreet way to say it.

“Horrible,” Anna suggested. “Abominable. Like a dead reindeer.”

“Something like that,” Elsa said, “but I thought you might love him.”

“Well, maybe,” Anna said defensively again, “sort of—I don’t know—but I still have a _nose_.”

Elsa lifted her chin. She’d long years of long practice at looking regal, though she’d little practice at jokes.

“Then that is my one condition. If you absolutely must marry a man, he will have to bathe.”

Thoughtfully Anna said, “It isn’t so bad after a couple days,” but that look—the laughing one Elsa was beginning to recognize for what it was—crinkled her eyes.

The candle’s flame weakened. In a moment Elsa would have to trim the wax and relight the wick. She stayed, holding Anna’s hands.

“Are you going to marry? I know that…some of the dignitaries were here about that.”

Elsa looked over her shoulder at their parents. They had loved each other, she knew, their mother and their father. Elsa had used to watch the king and queen kiss one another when they thought the girls could not see, and she wondered why they did so. It was as Anna had said, though Elsa did not know how Anna would have noticed, that Elsa could not bear the thought of kissing a man as their mother had kissed their father.

“For Arendelle,” Elsa said, “I might. And I would not want that burden to fall on you.”

“What burden?”

Elsa turned to her sister. “If I do not have children, Anna, then it falls to you to provide for the throne.”

“Oh,” said Anna. “Oh!” She flushed hotly enough her face nearly matched her hair. Her romantic fantasies, Elsa suspected, had not extended far beyond handsome princes who wanted only to kiss the back of her hand. She supposed that was something Anna and Kristoff would have to discuss with one another. Elsa had no desire to enter into that conversation.

“But we don’t need to think of that just yet,” Elsa said, squeezing Anna’s hand. “There’s time. You don’t have to fall in love with your mountain man tomorrow.”

Anna exhaled explosively. “I didn’t even _think_ of that. Heirs—that’s—oh, my gosh,” Anna said, staring at Elsa, “do _I_ have to marry a prince? For Arendelle?”

She would not force this on Anna, Elsa thought. Perhaps Anna did not need to be kept safe or protected. She would do this for Anna anyway.

“As your queen,” Elsa said, quite royally, “I will not ask that of you. And as your older sister, I will only ask that you marry someone you truly wish to marry.”

“But you shouldn’t have to marry someone you don’t want to marry either,” Anna protested. “As _your_ sister, I won’t let you do that!”

“We do have time,” Elsa reminded her, and stubbornly, Anna said,

“I’m not going to change my mind.”

Elsa smiled at her in the little, flickering light and clutched Anna’s hand so that her own fingers hurt. She wanted to say so many things then, so very many. All the years of silence were falling away and now Elsa did not know how to say everything she wanted so powerfully to say to Anna: how she loved her; how she’d missed her; how she did not care if Anna married the reindeer so long as Anna was happy; how, for now at least, beneath the portrait of their parents and in the dwindling light from the lamp, she did not even mind those silent years so long as they were here right now together, Elsa and her younger sister she was meant to look out for; how much it meant, in this moment, that Anna understood, that all the things Elsa had most feared—that Anna would hate her, that she would not understand, that she did not want a sister if that sister were Elsa—were rooted in nothing true.

“Thank you,” Elsa said. “Thank you for coming back for me.”

And Anna smiled and clutched Elsa’s hand as tightly and said, “Thank you for coming back to me,” and then—hesitating only very briefly—Elsa took her hands from Anna’s and opened her arms and embraced Anna, as Anna had embraced her; as Anna did embrace her. They held each other there in the growing darkness, Elsa’s arms around Anna’s shoulders and Anna’s hands pressed one on top of the other at the middle of Elsa’s back, and the night’s shadows were not so horrid when Anna was there with Elsa.

“I love you,” Elsa said, and she found it was not so hard to say, that when she had said it, the most extraordinary feeling came over her, a feeling like flight.

“I love you too,” Anna said, and it was like that moment on the North Mountain when Elsa had lifted her face up to the rising sun and she had thought: I am free; but now it was true. How wonderful it was, Elsa thought, not to be alone, to be loved by someone she loved, and she was laughing again and she did not ever want to stop.


End file.
